“I thought I’d like to tell you,” said Mr. Direck and became tremendously silent.

Cecily found him incredibly difficult to answer.  She tried to make herself light and offhand, and to be very frank with him.

“Of course,” she said, “I knew—­I felt somehow—­you meant to say something of this sort to me—­when you asked me to come with you—­”

“Well?” he said.

“And I’ve been trying to make my poor brain think of something to say to you.”

She paused and contemplated her difficulties....

“Couldn’t you perhaps say something of the same kind—­such as I’ve been trying to say?” said Mr. Direck presently, with a note of earnest helpfulness.  “I’d be very glad if you could.”

“Not exactly,” said Cecily, more careful than ever.

“Meaning?”

“I think you know that you are the best of friends.  I think you are, oh—­a Perfect Dear.”

“Well—­that’s all right—­so far.”

“That is as far.”

“You don’t know whether you love me?  That’s what you mean to say.”

“No....  I feel somehow it isn’t that....  Yet....”

“There’s nobody else by any chance?”

“No.”  Cecily weighed things.  “You needn’t trouble about that.”

“Only ... only you don’t know.”

Cecily made a movement of assent.

“It’s no good pretending I haven’t thought about you,” she said.

“Well, anyhow I’ve done my best to give you the idea,” said Mr. Direck.  “I seem now to have been doing that pretty nearly all the time.”

“Only what should we do?”

Mr. Direck felt this question was singularly artless.  “Why!—­we’d marry,” he said.  “And all that sort of thing.”

“Letty has married—­and all that sort of thing,” said Cecily, fixing her eye on him very firmly because she was colouring brightly.  “And it doesn’t leave Letty very much—­forrader.”

“Well now, they have a good time, don’t they?  I’d have thought they have a lovely time!”

“They’ve had a lovely time.  And Teddy is the dearest husband.  And they have a sweet little house and a most amusing baby.  And they play hockey every Sunday.  And Teddy does his work.  And every week is like every other week.  It is just heavenly.  Just always the same heavenly.  Every Sunday there is a fresh week of heavenly beginning.  And this, you see, isn’t heaven; it is earth.  And they don’t know it but they are getting bored.  I have been watching them, and they are getting dreadfully bored.  It’s heart-breaking to watch, because they are almost my dearest people.  Teddy used to be making perpetual jokes about the house and the baby and his work and Letty, and now—­he’s made all the possible jokes.  It’s only now and then he gets a fresh one.  It’s like spring flowers and then—­summer.  And Letty sits about and doesn’t sing.  They want something new to happen....  And there’s Mr. and Mrs. Britling.  They love each other.  Much more than Mrs. Britling dreams, or Mr. Britling for the matter of that.  Once upon a time things were heavenly for them too, I suppose.  Until suddenly it began to happen to them that nothing new ever happened....”